Filed under: Software, Video, Cool tools, Internet Tools
Perian - play most video formats in QuickTime for free
The veritable ocean of available video formats can often instigate a confusing and frustrating adventure in hunting for plugins and explaining to grandma why that DivX email forward she received plays the audio, but not the video. Fortunately, instead of bookmarking the plethora of codec download pages and backing up loads of installation disk images, a new plugin called Perian brands itself as a "swiss-army knife for QuickTime," as it aims to help solve all our video format woes. Perian supports an impressive list of codecs, including DivX, XviD, 3viX, FLV (y'know, those Flash files you can save but can't play because Adobe's Flash player doesn't seem to install an actual GUI front end?), AVI, and much more. Of course, you still need Flip4Mac if you have to play WMVs, but it looks like Perian can have you covered for most of the other formats you (and grandma) might encounter in your journey across the internets. As an upcoming bonus for Democracy Player users, Perian will be included in the next version.
Perian is offered for free from Perian.org, though I can't track down any system requirements or whether it works on both Mac and PC.
Thanks Rick
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Yuri Walkiw said 4:04PM on 9-30-2006
Does this mean I can watch divx and xvid inside of iTunes?
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Yuri Walkiw said 4:10PM on 9-30-2006
nope.
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mpmchugh said 4:36PM on 9-30-2006
Uh, yes you can:
http://trac.perian.org/wiki/SupportedFormats
You can alternatively use the Divx plugin:
http://www.divx.com/divx/mac/
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rusic said 5:26PM on 9-30-2006
dugged it earlier today... downloaded it... only thing missing is WVC 1 codec... other than that, Perian is superb...
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Kerensky said 6:03PM on 9-30-2006
Does anyone know if this is a universal binary?
Does the codec support apply to iTunes as well?
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enano275 said 6:09PM on 9-30-2006
This is one of the best things I have downloaded in a while, and it's just version 0.5. I used to have the Casio AVI Importer component installed for my new Casio Z750, it was mediocre, the video did not play smoothly, I knew it wasn't the camera's fault because it played just fine in VLC, now it plays perfectly good. I'm so happy.
This is a list of components that Persian makes obsolete:
http://trac.perian.org/wiki/CodecsObsoletedByPerian
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enano275 said 6:16PM on 9-30-2006
"Does anyone know if this is a universal binary?
Does the codec support apply to iTunes as well?"
Yes, it is Universal, don't know about the second one.
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Robert said 6:38PM on 9-30-2006
TUAW: "I can't track down [...] or whether it works on both Mac and PC."
Perian.org: "With Perian installed, any OS X application that uses QuickTime can now use..."
:-)
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Don Wilson said 6:52PM on 9-30-2006
I assure you this app doesn't work on Windows. :) Windows doesn't know what to do with DMG files except how to delete it. ;)
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univac said 7:31PM on 9-30-2006
I was hoping Perian would fix it, but I still cannot get AC3 audio to work on some AVIs. It works fine with VLC, but not QT.
???
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Halopend said 8:28PM on 9-30-2006
To Univac, it said on the Perian website that to play AC3 audio you need this too, http://trac.cod3r.com/a52codec/
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RWD fan said 8:32PM on 9-30-2006
Is there a reason to use this instead of Videolan that I am missing?
/seriously, not trying to be critical of this.
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Sharkdog said 2:50AM on 10-01-2006
I'm pretty keen on giving this a shot, but it seems that the disk image up for download is corrupt, I've tried practically all the mirrors they have available and every .dmg extracted from the .bz2 files is 'not recognized' when I try to open them.
Anyone else have this problem?
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Jason said 11:14PM on 9-30-2006
Yes, if it works in Frontrow (which crashes to the desktop on me if I have something Quicktime can't natively play)
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RamJaw said 1:33AM on 10-01-2006
Is it just me or do .avi's not have sound?
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Edge said 3:55AM on 10-01-2006
"Is there a reason to use this instead of Videolan that I am missing?
/seriously, not trying to be critical of this"
Yes. This is designed to playback within QuickTime, and any application that uses the QT framework to playback video. So any time you open a video file, including within iTunes and Safari, it would seem, it will simply play, without having to call a tthird party application.
Although VLC is a great can opener, it's a bit rough around the edges interface wise. Having one application for video (or at least the large majority) is a godsend.
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Lee Webb said 5:51AM on 10-01-2006
It won't download for me, I've clicked all the download mirrors and nothing happens!
Anyone else find that?
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Daniel D said 8:25AM on 10-01-2006
Lee Webb:
Yes all the links lead back to http://perian.org/, I do not know what the hell is going on with that, can anyone shed any light on how to download this?
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Lee Webb said 9:33AM on 10-01-2006
The Download page is fixed now.
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Todd Dominey said 11:36AM on 10-01-2006
This rules. I've been wanting to playback FLV in QuickTime for god knows how long, and this makes it as simple as can be.
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